The State Mental Health “Diagnose & Dash”

On the outskirts of downtown Traverse City, Michigan, just beyond the northern tourist bustle of Front Street but before reaching the vast expanse of shopping centers and strip malls that serve as the consumer mecca for the smattering of towns that dot the upper half of the lower peninsula, is the old Traverse City State Hospital. You’d be forgiven for missing it as the only sign of its existence from the main roads is a bunch of roundish stones that have been cemented together into a giant pyramid-shaped paperweight to mark the beginning of the hospital’s grounds. It is out of sight by design, as the Traverse City State Hospital was initially christened the Northern Michigan Asylum for the Insane when it was built in 1885. The building itself, or at least what’s left of it, is a monument to the type of sprawling Victorian architecture that fills so many…